The seven letter word game, 4th edition

Feb 16 22:40 UTC 2003

This is the 7-letter word game.  It works like this:  One person is "it".
That person thinks of a seven-letter word.  It must be a real, English word,
which can be found in some dictionary.

Other players try to guess the word, and their guesses must also be real,
English words.  The person who is "it" scores the guesses according to how
many letters in the guess match those in the word he's thinking of.  So for
instance, if the word is "privacy", then the scoring might go like this:

waffles  0  (no letters in common with privacy)
splashy  1  (both splashy and privacy have y as the 7th letter)
spinach  3  (spinach and privacy match in 3 places)

etc.  The game continues until someone guesses a word, and then that person
becomes "it", and the whole thing starts over again.

Complete rules are in ~rcurl/letter.match .  They were written for the 5- 
letter version of the game, but you can figure it out.  It's customary for 
the person who's "it" to store a list of all the current guesses in a file 
called letter.match7 in his or her home directory.  So for instance if 
kentn is "it", the guesses so far will be in ~kentn/letter.match7 .
Most people also display all guesses so far when they score a new guess.

response 2 of 1000:

Feb 16 22:53 UTC 2003

summary

response 4 of 1000:

Feb 17 00:32 UTC 2003

abandon

response 6 of 1000:

Feb 17 15:11 UTC 2003

chronal  0  (lastword)
parties  0  (kentn)
product  0  (prp)
summary  1  (carson)
forever  0  (prp)
abandon  0  (gelinas)
unaware  2  (kentn)

response 8 of 1000:

Feb 17 23:06 UTC 2003

chronal  0  (lastword)
parties  0  (kentn)
product  0  (prp)
summary  1  (carson)
forever  0  (prp)
abandon  0  (gelinas)
unaware  2  (kentn)
degrade  2  (janc)

response 10 of 1000:

Feb 18 01:39 UTC 2003

expiate

response 12 of 1000:

Feb 18 16:56 UTC 2003

spectre

response 14 of 1000:

Feb 19 01:04 UTC 2003

upbraid

response 16 of 1000:

Feb 20 02:36 UTC 2003

I did for a while think it ended in e, but there were other possibilities
such as upbraid that didn't. At this point in the game, upbraid was about
the only reasonable choice.
 
I'll try to have a word in mind next time.

response 18 of 1000:

Feb 20 13:34 UTC 2003

referee

response 20 of 1000:

Feb 21 22:43 UTC 2003

burning

response 22 of 1000:

Feb 22 02:31 UTC 2003

rumbles

response 24 of 1000:

Feb 22 14:34 UTC 2003

  upbraid  0  (The Last Word)
  ----------
  referee  1  (gelinas)
  element  0  (aruba)
  burning  1  (albaugh)
  ----------
  rumbles  0  (gelinas)
  jungles  0  (albaugh)
  ----------